SMS Element 1 of Safety Risk Management

Hazard Identification

An airline or airport SMS program must ensure that the safety risks encountered in aviation activities are controlled in order to achieve their safety performance targets. Safety risk management includes hazard identification, safety risk assessment and the implementation of appropriate control and recovery measures.

Airlines and airports need to develop and maintain a formal process to ensure that hazards associated with their aviation products or services are identified.

Hazard identification shall be based on a combination of reactive, proactive and predictive methods of safety data collection.

Compliance is indicated when:

The organization has a reporting system to captures errors, hazards and near misses that is simple to use and accessible to all personnel;

The organization has proactively identified all the major hazards and assessed the risks related to its current activities;

The safety reporting system provides feedback to the reporter of any actions taken (or not taken) and, where appropriate, to the rest of the organization;

Safety investigations are carried out to identify underlying causes and potential hazards for existing and future operations;

Safety reports are acted on in a timely manner;

Hazard identification is an ongoing process and involves all key personnel and appropriate stakeholders;

Personnel responsible for investigating reports are trained in investigation techniques;

Investigations establish causal/contributing factors (why it happened, not just what happened);

Personnel express confidence and trust in the organization's reporting policy and process;

The hazards identified are documented and kept available for future reference; and

The organization uses the results of investigation of incidents and accidents as a source for hazard identification in the system

This element is satisfied when aviation safety hazards are being identified and reported throughout the organization. Hazards are captured in a hazard register and assessed in a systematic and timely manner..